In search of the perfect Christmas tree stand

In terms of strife, right behind Custer's last stand is the Christmas tree stand.

Each year about this time, Mr. and Mrs. America are at each other's throats over the seemingly simple task of securing a pine or spruce vertically in a stand.

He lies awkwardly on the floor, suffering an occasional needle in the eye while trying to tighten the tiny bolts.

She attempts to hold the tree straight but is way too close to it to see if it is, which, invariably, it is found not to be when he crawls out to take a look. If a child is available, it's a good idea to station the kid back a ways to say, "Little to the left. No, left! LEFT!!" That way, when the tree still isn't straight, Mom and Dad can gang up on the kid. After many unpleasant things, not at all in the spirit of the holiday, have been said, the tree is agreeably upright and ready to decorate. This is an occasion for lots more bickering, but because decorating is not the focus of this piece, we move directly on to when the totally trimmed triumph falls down.

It happens in slow motion. First there's the sense that the tree isn't as straight up and down as it was. Then there's the sudden realization that the top is moving away from the wall. As though in a bad dream, the tree is just far enough beyond reach that you can't get to it in time. When the first glass ornaments hit the floor with small, percussive explosions, time speeds back to normal and everyone starts blaming everyone else all over again, maybe this time throwing in in-laws who, even though they aren't there, aren't excused.

Some years ago, this sort of struggle dampened the holiday for Jim and Barb Grinnen of Wampum, Pa., Jim had bought a stand with the promise that it would "grip the tree as well as the earth did." Instead, the stand cracked and leaked water. The tree dried out, dropped needles and ornaments and, eventually, fell. Barb cried. "It was a short season," Jim recalled.

In the great American tradition of tinkering up a solution to a problem, the kind of tinkering that gave the world the cotton gin and the light bulb, Jim Grinnen got some tubular steel and other materials and tinkered together a tree stand. It looked a little like a bear trap with a lasagna pan attached, but it addressed one of the failings of most stands. The trees that become Christmas trees are softwoods; and, as the term implies, don't hold screws very well. Jim Grinnen's stand got around that by strapping the trunk to the stand. He made a wide (30-inch) base for stability and, after fine-tuning the thing and spending $30,000 to get a patent and start a business, offered it for sale in 1992. The newest model is warranted for life and holds trees stumps from 3- to 8-inch diameters. Grinnen's Last Stand is $35. Find it at www.christmastreestand.info/

Each year, the National Christmas Tree Association in Milwaukee hears from inventors who have an idea that will blow away the ubiquitous red bowl with green legs standard. Though it might seem a simple thing, the perfect, Holy Grail of stands seems elusive. One prototype employed a powerful spring, which, if the tree were improperly placed, would shoot that conifer right up in the air. Another, made of half-inch steel plate, was wonderfully stable but weighed a daunting 200 pounds.

There's also the human factor to consider. A stand needs to be just about foolproof, since many trees are put up and decorated at parties at which alcohol is dispensed leading to an instability that can transfer to the stand.

A major challenge is to provide sufficient water (one quart for each inch of trunk diameter) with a reservoir that won't leak or spill all over the place when the tree is removed.

Harold Odom, who lives in the Houston area, always bought the family's tree and always thought it silly to knock off the sturdy wood stand nailed to the trunk in order to put it in a shaky stand containing water.

"I thought, `There's gotta be a better way,'" he said, echoing the words that are the starting gun for all inventions.

He wondered, "If a real Christmas tree drinks water out of the bowl stand through the bottom of the trunk, why won't it drink water from the side of the trunk if I could make it available?" He tried using Coke bottles as an outside water reservoir, and it didn't work. He put the idea on hold until his daughter urged him to give it another try. He fooled around with various sizes of holes and kinds of stoppers and tubing and created the system that he tested in 1990 and patented the next year.

The Christmas Tree I-V, Odom said, is "something exciting, extremely practical and needed by everyone in the whole world who celebrates Christmas using a real Christmas tree." And yet, not many in the world bought it. He soon was out of money.